Monday morning, 10/23, there appear to have been no new posts on PT since Friday evening. Refreshing does zippo, whether on a given thread or on the main site. Posting--er, attempting to post, er, make that, even attempting to preview--a comment results in "409 Forbidden."

Wha?!?

This really does get old. If money is needed, one of the member-posters needs to go on the main site, start a post, and ask for the money. What is so hard about getting a bigger server, better interface software, whatever.

Were we so bowled over with getting the SciAm award last year that we're determined to retreat into obscurity?

Thanks, Wesley. Not only was that easy to do, but it worked! I 've never had a similar situation develop with any other internet site, even ones on which I am a more frequent visitor than here (even one that I partially moderate). But I'm far from an expert, so I'll reserve judgment on why PT and my one-and-only cache-overload "appear" to be correlated.

Henry: possibly not and, again, I don't have the tech knowledge to defend any claim that PT's infrastructure isn't performing comparably to a "comparable" site or forum.

But problems continue to occur with accessing the site, slow loading of the site, accessing the comments, slow loading of the comments, previewing and posting the comments, unintentional duplication of comments, accessing AtBC, etc., that I either NEVER have anywhere else or have very rarely.

I realize that we are in some sort of a server changeover, so I'm not going to jump up and down any further until that's been given a fair chance to shake out.

But, ultimately, if problems continue to occur, it would seem that at least one of several hypotheses becomes increasingly reasonable: we simply need more horsepower--let's make a concerted effort to fund and purchase it; we need better interface software (degas: ugh!)--let's investigate the options and obtain something that does a better job. Etc.

I'm fully aware that when I say "we," I actually mean hard-working souls like Wesley and Reed, who have a lot on their own plates...so I'm being patient.

Same thing again today, 10/25: opened PT and was still looking at "Recent Comments" which has frozen with one of Lenny's on the Poynter Institute from early yesterday. "Refresh" did nothing. Cleared the cache again (sigh) and got to see the new posts (Obama, Miller, etc.) and new comments.

This ain't right, folks. I'm using XP and IE, hardly the best but certainly the most whitebread operating system and browser out there. They're giving me zero trouble with any other site.

(The moderator returns home after being in town half the day. Pulls up AtBC...Let's see...About 6 active threads...Lookin good...Maybe a halloween idea... ~40 or so new comments explaining why AFDave's new claims are wrong 27 different ways... Everything's normal...Several more comments on that worthless ghetto thread of Paley's... Revisiting the reasons pro/con for taking action about that mess...checking out the UD thread...chuckle chuckle...)

SteveStory, very good judgement on moderation. Masturbating hobos is a good place to draw the line.

Is there any way to see all comments by a single poster?

uh, why can't you click on the search button at the top of the page, then use the search by field to select "user name"? then simply type the name of the user in the keywords field, and select the range of dates you want to search in, and the forum.

What about (after identifying which thread), downloading the whole thread using the "All" link (as text file if you don't want to mess with the html code), load that into a word processor or text editor, then use the search function in that?

Sometimes I can't get here for an hour, and then see that there were several comments during that time, so my experience isn't necessarily representative of the group. Everybody knows there are connection problems, I don't want to be annoying by recomplaining, but I am curious about how my experiences are matching others'. Has today been the absolute worst for anyone else? I'd say 90% of my attempts to load a page have timed out today.

Sometimes I can't get here for an hour, and then see that there were several comments during that time, so my experience isn't necessarily representative of the group. Everybody knows there are connection problems, I don't want to be annoying by recomplaining, but I am curious about how my experiences are matching others'. Has today been the absolute worst for anyone else? I'd say 90% of my attempts to load a page have timed out today.

It seems like it's an all-or-nothing proposition. Either pages come up pretty quickly, or the connection times out.

Today's been one of the worst in the recent past in terms of time-outs.

--------------2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

BTW, you guys are developing a reputation. Occasionally in my blogosphere travels I encounter a creationist who I think will provide lots of entertainment for us. Sometimes I contact them and let them know that a good fiesty discussion can be had by starting a thread here which focuses on their ideas.

The last two times I've done this, upon mention of AtBC, the response has been, "Yeah, uh, thanks but no thanks." They react like I'm asking if I can throw them bodily into a Troy-Bilt chipper shredder.

This afternoon, in a miracle that almost equals that of the recent election, the site seems to be working fine. Not only does it open, but the comments open, new comments post without problems, and everything refreshes in real-time, without need for cache-clearing.

steve: what's the progress on obtaining a new server or at least a good used one? The levels of problems with this board are unlike any other site that I visit.

Cache-clearing, changing IP's using proxies or whatever seem to "help" a bit, but...this is pretty bad.

Oh, and I did donate 50 bucks towards a new server, so I'm not *just* complaining, although I like doing that. And another thing, why isn't this place cleaned up yet? Clothes all over the place, empty booze bottles, pizza boxes, ####. It's like carnival workers lived here.

Sorry about all the pizza boxes though. I do bus mine, when I'm not too drunk to forget.

(Hmmm. There's a good country song in this thread somewhere:"The servers never pick up the pizza cartons...The stupid servers don't seem to do much at all!Guess I'll just chug down another coupla bottles,Then kick old a-f-dave on down the hall!")